The toerags who bombard my email account with spam clearly think otherwise, but I've never been terribly interested in pornography. Pictures of trailer-park trash may be only a click and a credit-card number away, but I'd rather wash the dishes for half an hour. In life, there are doers and watchers, and temperamentally I've always seen myself as one of the former.

This informs my approach to wine, too. As far as I'm concerned, drinking it is a lot more appealing than talking about it. Or watching someone else drink it. I know there are people out there who enjoy stroking labels and fantasising about great bottles, but they bore me to the point of narcolepsy. Wine as liquid porn is a huge turn-off. That's why I try to write about bottles that people can afford. Who wants to read about something that costs more than the GDP of Latvia?

But this week I crave your indulgence. Recently I went to a dinner at Christie's hosted by Château Latour, one of Bordeaux's - and the world's - great wine estates, and I'm itching to tell you about it. I don't get invited to such events very often. You're more likely to find me in front of a line-up of Somerfield's finest than a retrospective of top claret or Burgundy. I've drunk some historic wines in my time, including a Madeira and a Rioja from the 1890s, but this was a bit special. In fact, I think it's safe to say that no one on the planet drank better wines that night.

If I tell you that the youngest wine in the tasting was produced in my birth year, 1961, and that the oldest was an 1881, you'll understand my excitement. In between, we tasted the 1890, the 1909, the 1917, the 1924, the 1937, the legendary 1945 and the 1952. Such bottles are not quite priceless, but they'd make Bill Gates think twice about raiding his current account. The 1945 sold for £1,600 at the subsequent Christie's sale on 22 May. That's per bottle, by the way.

I could regale you with my tasting notes on each wine, but I'd have to send someone round to wake you up afterwards. I'd also be subjecting you to vinous pornography, the very thing I deplore. Most of you will never get to drink the wines we had, so you're probably not interested in whether the 1890 is still developing, or the 1937 is over the hill. And I don't blame you.

If all tasting notes are subjective, then those for old wines are doubly so. My shagged-out claret could be your elegant, ethereal Pauillac. That's not to say that there weren't some great wines opened that night, possibly some of the greatest I'll ever taste. But when you're drinking wines from 50 years ago, let alone a different century, things like bottle variation render the exercise somewhat academic.

As all three of my regular readers will know, I'm usually a confirmed member of the DIY (Drink It Young) club. But tasting historic wines can be a spiritual experience. Its ability to age in bottle - and to put us in touch, however fleetingly, with an era before telephones, motorcars and Celebrity Big Brother - is what sets wine apart from other beverages. Unlike pornography, its fascination is boundless.

· Tim Atkin has won the 2003 Lanson Wine Writer of the Year Award for his work in The Observer.